11. School autonomy. School. Mission accomplished? The siamese twins of educational governance. Page 12. Do I want to do this? Am I allowed to do this?
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stefan Brauckmann
More Action Than Reflection? Empirical Insights into the Relationship of School Autonomy and School Leadership
How could you as school leaders deal with autonomy in a productive way?
• Autonomy and leadership • Autonomy versus leadership • Autonomy or leadership
• Autonomy as leadership
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Evolution of the term autonomy – Meanings and assumptions
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αὐτονομία
autòs
nomòs
self
custom/law
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Fostering the independence of the child normative
Fostering the professional autonomy of teachers Fostering the institutional autonomy of the school 5
Idea(l) of school autonomy Higher educational administration level Pursuing strategic objectives School Decision making authority
Organisational autonomy
Budgeting autonomy
Staffing autonomy Pedagogical autonomy 6
School autonomy as a kind of magic after the PISA shock • Unleashing the innovative potential
• Focus on locally adapted and portable solutions (less red tape) • Better fit between the closer environment of the schools and the needs of the students • Fostering tailored made instructional and school development activities • Enabling schools to produce better student performance 7
School autonomy as new hope
„Improvement of school quality and meeting more locally specific needs“ (OECD 2008a, S.524)
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When was the last time you saw such a powerful instrument in the hands of an even more powerful principal using it to the benefit of his students?
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Dealing with autonomy – some lessons from the real world
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The siamese twins of educational governance Mission accomplished?
School
School autonomy
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Becoming more autonomous and accountable! But as a school leader…
Do I want to do this? Am I allowed to do this? Can I do this?
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Lust for leadership in Germany? „Teacher Union prophesizes lack of school leaders“
(Handelsblatt, 5.01.2012)
„Lack of school leaders in Germany“
(3sat.online, 30.09.2011)
„School leaders desperately sought“
(taz.de, 16.06.2011, Berliner Zeitung, 19.04.2010)
„359 schools at Rhein and Ruhr (NRW) without school leaders“ (Rheinische Post online, 13.02.2008)
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The BMBF funded research project SHaRP • Which activities can be found in the context of autonomous schools? • What does the workload of school leaders look like? • What kinds and levels of stress do these activities place on the school principals? • What kind of additional resources are provided to the school principals in order to pursue their new tasks? 14
SHaRP research design
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Documentary analyses: description of the task fields covered by school leaders from a legal, theoretical and practical perspective (target state)
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Quantitative field phase: data collection of task structures and work load of school leaders (actual state)
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Qualitative field phase: objectification of self reported task structures and in depth analysis with regards to self reported work load
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Final phase: contrasting and integrating quantitative and qualitative research findings 15
Selected empirical findings
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Action priorities by task field (3 most important areas)
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• More time spend on tasks does not result necessarily in higher stress • Importance of new task fields (staff development, school development) seems to be high, amount of time spend on those new tasks is rather low (professional dilemma) • A greater workload with regards to organizational administration (delegation of administration) 18
Minds on
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• Autonomy may provide the basis as well as supportive conditions for the enhanced governance of the system, but whether they are successful in the defined sense remains an empirical question
• Innovation does not work by itself, delivering the desired benefits automatically Rather, innovative measures need to be understood at different levels of the education system, adapted and developed in new measures
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• Controversial demands might result from the new tasks • The autonomy mix is highly context specific (differs from country to country, region to region, school to school) • There is no such a thing like one size fits all
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Hands on
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Bottom up autonomy/autonomy within the organisation • More space for „new“ leadership activities might result out of a well designed organisational structure • Translating instructional autonomy (best practice) into school autonomy • More problem related and context specific training arrangements there is no standardized school leader • Failure recognition and fault tolerance • Granting, not imposing autonomy on schools
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There is no best autonomy (recipe) also everybody might wish for it from time to time… (as a kind of a magic) In the end you shape a school culture and school structure which allows for different levels of a self learning organisation and therefore self governed school… (you create your own magic) So get ready…
